


Beyond the End of the World

by LilBugPrincess



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Figuring out what's real and what's fiction and being more confused than when they started, Gen, I'm sorry most everyone is still dead, Moving On, Post-Canon, Survivor Guilt, headcanons about what the hell the end of NDRV3 actually was, most relationships in the past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-27 14:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15687147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilBugPrincess/pseuds/LilBugPrincess
Summary: The Killing Game Never Ends! But it did. And the survivors are alive, even if they didn't mean to be. With the world of "Dangan Ronpa" ended, there's nothing to do but set out into the world beyond it and try to sort what was real and what was fiction, and find out how the hell they're supposed to fit into any of it.





	1. The Edge of the World

**Author's Note:**

> I think I maybe loved NDRV3? A lot? But it was also an incredibly wild ride with a whole lot of unanswered questions, and I'm sure going to have fun sorting through that! Most of the naming and spelling of names will be based on the English Localization, as it was the version I experienced.
> 
> The start might be a little different from how the game ends, but please don't dwell too much on it!

There were only three of them left.

There were supposed to be none.

And at first Shuichi didn't know what to think of that. They were supposed to die… they  _ agreed _ to die, together, as one. Their lives, real or fiction, would have that meaning in death: they would change the world. They would end Dangan Ronpa.

No more killing games. No more real fiction. No more them.

But he couldn’t bring himself to give up once he awoke under a slab of concrete, his eyes stinging and his body aching and yet alive… it almost felt shameful, that first sensation, that first impulse to get up. He wanted to live… after all his speeches, all his resolve, he wanted to live, and when he crawled out of the wreckage, he found Himiko and Maki seemed to have wanted the same thing.

There was a hole in the dome that he once thought was all that remained of the world.

“K...kiibo…”

Himiko couldn’t say much more than his name, and he couldn’t help but hang his head when she didn't continue. It felt too… lonely.

A hole was the only proof that remained of Kiibo; the Kiibo they knew, not whatever he’d been before the game. He’d almost been erased, he’d chosen to give them the ending they wanted as his last act and now he hadn’t even left a body. And yet that hole… It felt like…

“Maybe it's… a message.” He murmured, and stepped forward, wincing as his body protested. Maki shifted to slip one arm under him, and he smiled at her in thanks. ‘...to us. If we survived.”

“Go out and see for yourself… maybe?” She was quiet as ever as they all gazed at that exit, the blue, blue sky that waited beyond it. There was nothing left for them in the game and so they walked away, together. It wasn’t easy--the academy (the set, Shuichi had to remind himself), was in ruins, shattered by the fight between Kiibo and Exisals, then by the robot’s final gift. Shuichi was bruised, enough that even walking felt exhausting. Himiko limped, but didn't ask for a piggyback ride, trudging forward on her own feet. Maki was a little bit unsteady and kept squinting, pressing one hand to her head as they went.

They passed the front of the school and didn't look at the stain of blood that marked Tsumugi’s plain end, but the smell was sharp and too-familiar to ignore, lingering even when they had walked beyond it.

Copy-cat criminal…. He wasn’t sure why that phrase stuck in his mind, of all the insane, wild ramblings she’d had to say at their trial. She'd died with everything exposed, right?

The real fiction had been revealed for what it was, the truth laid bare like he'd promised it would be. The truth beyond the truth, as painful and incomprehensible as it was.

It took a while to find a place where they could cross over… the concrete and steel and glass had collapsed enough that all they had to do was climb up over the rubble, but when he reached it, Shuichi’s feet stopped.

Himiko was shaking, pale. Maki looked like she was going to be sick.

“...nyeeh… w...what should w-we do, if we leave…?” Himiko was again the first to speak, slowly shifting in until she could press against Maki’s side for something approaching comfort. “...w-what if the… t-the world r-really doesn't want us?”

“Are you scared?” Maki didn't take her gaze from the mountain of destroyed materials, her eyes sharp and dark like when she was focusing on a target. Himiko went silent, biting her lip and trying to hide behind her hat.

Shuichi didn't get a chance to say anything before Maki spoke again, her voice so much softer. “...I am. I don't… know what to do with myself, any more. All that suffering, everything I did… if it was all fiction, I…” She fell silent, swallowed hard, then had to shake her head, composing herself. “...but… it's okay. There's nothing left here, so we have to go forward. Like some… some kind of reckless idiot.”

“...yeah.” Shuichi’s smile felt bittersweet, but the memory of Kaito remained fresh in his mind. If he’d been there, he wouldn't have hesitated. He'd charge forward, into whatever mess awaited them, and somehow he'd find a way to make it work out, yelling at  _ them _ for hesitating. “...and… something about what Tsumugi said… feels off.”

The girls looked at him, as he shifted forward to begin finding his footing, slowly pulling himself up on the rubble. “...near the end… she said something about a… copy-cat criminal. I… maybe it's nothing but isn't it possible that she wasn't telling us the truth, even in the end?”

“Nyeh? But she was so…” Himiko was next, though it was clearly far more of a struggle for her than Shuichi, slipping and whimpering as she tried to follow the path he took, “...it felt like she was gloating…”

“...but when you think about it… doesn't it still feel impossible? That the whole world could be peaceful, that everyone would simply agree to this? That we’d just sign up to be a part of this?”

“...do you think there was…” Maki outpaced them both immediately, turning to then help tug Himiko higher where she struggled, “...she could go as far as to fake our own memories, right? Do you think she faked more things, then…?”

“...yeah. I… I m-mean, I guess I don't really know. Maybe I've got it all--ngh--wrong.” He laughed awkwardly, clinging to a piece of rebar to catch his breath, “...and we’ll have to struggle like that. But there's just something that feels a little bit… odd, to me. So we have to see it for ourselves. I just… don’t feel like everything fits quite right”

“See for ourselves…”

“...I-I guess we gotta...”

Shuichi reached the peak of the rubble, and closed his eyes tight before he could see what lay on the other side. It was childish, but it was also all he could do--it felt so tempting to jump back down and hide away, but if he did… how would Kaede feel, watching him? How would he be able to face her memory?

He had to find the truth. He had to  _ face _ the truth, together with Maki and Himiko. They had to grasp their reality, together, no matter what it meant.

He opened his eyes.

The sky was blue.

 

* * *

 

It was so blue, and so expansive, and his breath caught in his chest. It was  **real** , so deep and bright and going on forever, the heavens Kaito had dreamt of exploring stretching out before them.

And below it laid a grid of buildings, steel and plaster and dull colors, far from a metropolis, but it was so much more life than he would've dreamed. There were roads, and cars, and warehouses…

And Maki let out a sharp gasp, followed by a weak wail from Himiko, and Shuichi’s stomach lurched as they first saw the bodies, one after another, dozens if not hundreds of people lying motionless spread out before them.


	2. Body Investigation in the Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weren't they supposed to be done with inspecting dead bodies? Wasn't every mystery already solved? It's not fair... it's not fair at all, Himiko can't help but think.

Some part of Himiko had thought, even now, there'd be nothing out there. When she closed her eyes, the sight when they thought they'd escaped was burned into her memory: the burnt out buildings, the sky all red and alien, the world she'd known destroyed and empty and lifeless. She remembered how it'd sucked the air from her lungs like some kind of monster, so voracious that even her magic couldn't protect her. She remembered going from hopeful to empty in the blink of the eye, the sudden realization of what Gonta had thought was so horrifying that he'd kill to save them from it.

But the world was still there. The buildings before them were largely in one piece, though some of the nearest to the hole they had climbed from had been damaged, broken. It wasn’t like they’d been left to rot--it was just Kiibo’s effect, pieces of the dome and his explosion having wrecked the area nearby.

His self-destruct. His _sacrifice_. Kiibo was a robot, and she’d always thought of him as one, no matter how he complained when anyone pointed it out, but she was pretty sure that most robots couldn’t defy their programming like he had. Robots didn’t die to save their friends, right?

Again, she'd realized what she should've done far too late. Like Tenko, like Angie, she could’ve been kinder to Kiibo, she could’ve figured it out so much _sooner_ … but it was too late now. It was too late, and she had to still move forward, because that’s what she’d promised, but she couldn’t do that, either.

Because the ground before them was littered with bodies.

She wanted to wail and cry and run away, but where could she run to? The only ones left for her were Maki and Shuichi, and they were as frozen as her before the reality outside the academy. There were so many of them… more than she could count, even with her powers! She’d thought she'd become used to seeing bodies, but this was just too much. Her legs gave out before she even realized it, Maki the only reason she didn’t immediately tumble to her own death.

It wasn’t as if they’d been too close when the dome exploded… the rubble didn’t really reach the bodies, and where they lay was amidst toppled tables and trash. They were all just heaped up, unmoving, their faces hidden by...

“M...monobear masks? N...no they’re… it looks like a helmet…” Shuichi was probably the calmest of them, even now, but she kind of wished he wouldn’t be. She didn’t want to _hear_ it even if her eyes were closed _…_! “W...what is this…?”

“...C...congratulations. Team Danganronpa…” Maki yanked Himiko a little bit closer, away from the edge,  and she finally dared peek through her hands back at the sight. She couldn't help but stare at the people lying on the ground, their faces hidden behind grinning mechanical monobear heads, some contorted painfully, some leaking blood from the helmets. If Maki hadn’t pointed it out, she probably would’ve missed the banner that had been erected over the group, printed bright and bold. Someone had added something to the bottom, hand-written in a messy scrawl

“Despair until next time? I...nyeeh?” She looked up at the others, but neither Maki nor Shuichi looked like they knew what they were seeing, anymore than she did, “I don’t... are they all--have t-they been dead all along? I don’t understand…! I don’t under _stand!!_ ”

Tenko had said she shouldn’t bottle it up, but she didn’t want to be crying like this, wailing in the silence of a world that was as dead as the fake they’d seen beyond the tunnel. She’d wanted--what, exactly? She wanted the friends and family she remembered to come running as soon as she was outside, to tell her that it was all lies, that they were real, that they wanted her back... or it would've been okay, if _anyone_ had been come to help them, or anything… anything! Even if people hadn’t cared, even if someone had been mad at them, anything would be better than death! Hadn't they already seen enough? Couldn't they get a break!?

Maki made an attempt to hug her with one arm, but it wasn’t the same as being hugged by Angie. It didn’t make her feel better, not really, and so she closed her eyes tight again and tried to remember what it had felt like.

“H-hold up… I--I’ll get a closer look!” She could hear Shuichi’s voice and then the clatter of rock as he tried to get down, and Maki called out to him.

“Wait--don’t go too far ahead! Once Himiko can go on, we can all-”

“N-no…” Himiko didn’t even realize she was going to be able to speak before she already was, slowly opening her eyes again and wiping her tears and snot away, tugging her hat down over her face, “....we... I promised I’d keep going forward, s-so I can’t… I can’t stop here…!” She wanted to sound bold, but her legs were shaking so bad she didn’t think she could move.

She still needed the others help to get down, and when they finally reached the ground Shuichi was already investigating the nearest body, a tall man in a crisp white shirt and slacks. She didn’t want to look at them at all, and so instead she looked up, glancing over the buildings around them. There was something odd, like it wasn’t a proper city, but it wasn’t something she could put her finger on...

“Ah, the latch is… Harukawa, can you help me get it open? I can’t do it with my hands…” Even without seeing them, she at least had the comfort of hearing their voices, and there was a metallic click afterwards while Himiko wandered a little farther. There were shattered lights and screens and tables and paper and trash, and a big tent big enough to cover it all that had been blown away and collapsed against a nearby building--that was Kiibo again, freeing them.

“....he’s definitely dead.” Maki sounded certain, “What is this…?”

If they were going to look at the body then she had to make herself useful too, right? She was dead weight, she knew that, but maybe if she looked around she could still find a useful clue. She'd helped in the trial, right?

Something glinted in the rubble, catching Himiko’s eye--no, her magical senses, they were tingling just looking at it, telling her it was important! Glass that didn’t seem like it came from the dome, black plastic, and...

It all clicked at once. A camera. A really fancy, big, broken camera.

“N...nyeeehh… S...shuichi, Maki…” She looked back, and the others lifted their head from the man they were investigating, “....doesn’t this feel like… a… a movie studio, or s-something…?”

They paused, and she held up the ruined bit of camera she’d found, grunting at its weight, “...I found this. And I think lights had been under here… a-and the buildings, you know, isn’t it like that? I’ve seen it on tv and stuff…” she glanced around, then pointed down at steel tracks that had been hidden by bits of broken dome. "This sort of t-thing is used to move cameras around..."

“...ah...”

She rejoined them, trying not to see the field of bodies,  offering the camera up to Shuichi to look at. She needed to try and summon all her mystic willpower just to look down at the single man they'd chosen to investigate; he was definitely dead, just like they’d said, just like Miu… his eyes were all empty, his face all blue, little traces of foam on his mouth. The monobear head was definitely a helmet, all filled with complicated electronics, a big screen in front where his eyes would be.

It just had Monobear’s face, spinning slowly in the center over a field of static, words scrolling across the screen without pause, the same phrase over and over. _Congratulations, Dangan Ronpa V.3! ENOSHIMA END!_

“... Is this is the staff?” What kind of magic did Maki use, that kept her voice all calm, even looking at this!? It felt unfair that Himiko didn’t know it, too. “Team Danganronpa. Tsumugi was talking about it being a tv show... I guess they’d need people to work on it. All of them...  _they were **all...!**_ ”

Her expression suddenly twisted into something dark, calm evaporating as she shifted her weight, lifting a foot to stomp in the dead man's face. Himiko grabbed her sleeve in a panic, but she stopped there, glaring down at him but not following through.

“They were _working_ with her. We were all suffering and they were… _they were the ones who did it,_ **_all of them…!”_**  Maki's voice cracked and Himiko’s hands closed tighter around her arm, her heart suddenly racing--she was terrifying all at once, cold and sharp like she’d turned into someone else, like she wanted the man to wake up so she could murder him herself. “They could’ve stopped this, but they were all…!”

“H-harukawa...”

The older girl remained frozen as Shuichi spoke, and that was enough for Himiko to try too.

“M-maki…! T-they’re all dead already….!” She swallowed hard, “S-so there’s nothing more we can d-do, right? Right? T-they’ve already been punished…!”

Long seconds passed before the other girl slowly returned her foot to the ground, hands balling into tight fists.

“...yeah. Yeah, I… I guess.”

Neither of them knew what to say to that. The world became silent once more, the three survivors and the field of monobear-headed bodies, and a man's wide, blank eyes staring at nothing, Maki lowering her head and began to shake, Himiko slowly letting go and looking away.

Tenko probably would've been able to say something encouraging to change the mood… or maybe Angie would’ve been able to hold her and make it all less painful, but Himiko didn't know how to do any of that.

All her magic but she didn't really know what to do as Maki turned away from them.

“...nothing else... there's nothing else we can do, huh?”


	3. Fictional Bloodlust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's an empty studio and empty bodies all before her, and Maki wonders if her feelings are all empty, too. They're fiction after all, right?

She wanted to hurt someone.

It was all fake, all fiction--her instincts, her knowledge of killing, her bloodlust. She had never been an assassin and yet fury burned so deep in her chest she wanted to puke. Maki wanted to crush the skull of one of the people who’d gotten Kaito killed, wanted to find a survivor among all the bodies and torture them until they begged for mercy, just so she could show them the same amount  _ they’d _ been granted.

But she couldn’t hurt anyone. Maki wasn't really an assassin, and there was no one alive, and Himiko and Shuichi wouldn’t feel better if she did something like that, anyway. They were all she really had anymore, so she couldn’t hurt  _ them _ .

“I don’t understand it at all…” She lifted an arm, wiping at her eyes, keeping her voice steady until she could face the others again. “It doesn't look like they were got in the dome’s destruction… and none of them were a part of the game, so there wasn't any punishment. Were they already dead when we went into the last trial?”

“I think…”

Shuichi’s voice started to ease something in her throat, even with barely two words. Even if his talent was fake too, they could rely on him to help understand this new reality, no matter what it meant… and when she looked at him he had one hand at his chin, his gaze distant in that way he got when he was figuring something out.

“I think this was… supposed to be a wrap party. Like… a celebration for the end of the season. By the time I demanded a trial, they must’ve known that it would end, one way or another; if you look around, it feels like they were holding a picnic or such.”

That thought made Maki’s hackles rise--that they’d celebrate that goddamned trial and all the pain and suffering it’d brought--but she kept quiet, letting Himiko shuffle behind her while Shuichi continued.

“Look… the banner is thanking the team, right? And over there…” He pointed and she followed--a collapsed table and food that had spilled all over the ground. She’d noticed it but not really registered what it’d meant, given how many people had fallen atop it all. A soft nyehh suggested Himiko hadn’t realized either. “It’s all food you can eat standing, snacks and stuff, and if this place really is a studio and they’re all staff… they're still not cold, and rigor mortis hasn't set in, so whatever happened, it must've been incredibly recent.”

“...when we ended the game.”

“Yeah. There was no way they were expecting that we’d use our lives… or that the killing game could possibly end, if they’d gone through 53 before it. So to them, they must’ve felt the same as Tsumugi… that this was the worst case scenario. With the banner and the message in the mask… Junko Enoshima died when she was caught, right?”

Maki gazed back down at the dead man, with his blank eyes and open mouth, still lit up by the screen in his helmet. “...how did they die, then?”

“I can't figure out how, other than it being related to the helmets, but… I get the feeling it might've been some kind of mass suicide.”

Again, again… how did she feel this angry? How did fictional bloodlust burn her veins like this, like she could rip apart the world that had robbed her the chance to… **_do_ ** something to it? She couldn’t even yell at them, they’d all gone and died like they didn't owe her that much.

“What now then?” She lifted her head, ignoring the remaining staff where they lay, starting to step away and counting on the others to follow her, feeling a faint sense of reassurance when they did. “We have no way of knowing if there’s anyone left alive around here, or even where they are… we’re just as isolated as we were at the academy.”

“We…!” Himiko spoke up suddenly, “We should check around inside and s-stuff! For clues… and--you know, maybe there’s a computer or a telephone! I’d fly us out of here with my magic, but… m-my mana is all empty after things… s-so…”

“Yeah… I think it’s our best bet. We need more information, and if this really is a studio, then we should be able to find out more about Danganronpa itself.” Shuichi was at her side again, smiling at her, and Maki didn’t really know how she was supposed to react to it. She felt…

Adrift. Was this how Himiko had felt before? Like she wanted to just sit down and stop moving until she died? Shuichi was still looking forward and so was Himiko, but she felt like her legs were on auto-pilot from the moment she’d realized she was alive.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Tsumugi’s words. All the suffering she’d survived in her training (fiction, it was all fiction, so how did it feel real?), her feelings about Kaito, her heart’s soft voice… she knew, she  _ knew _ that he’d say something about her needing to push forward, but was the comfort that thought gave her fictional too?

“....we’ll keep going.”

She started slightly when Shuichi spoke again, glancing down. He was still smiling that same way.

“No matter what, we’ll figure it out. So you don’t have to worry on your own, okay, Harukawa?” He laughed, rubbing the back of his head, “...since we’re both Kaito’s sidekicks… we have to s-support each other for him.”

Ah, there it was again… her heart telling her that same thing. Fiction was too annoying, really… even knowing it was fake, it could touch her.

Maki paused, letting the others walk past her for a moment before she nodded and stepped up. “...yeah. Sorry, I… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It’s okay, Maki-roll.” She kind of wanted to glare at Himiko but let it go, since she was scared enough already, “W-we… y-you know! Neither of us r-really know, either…! But we’re all together, s-so…! So we can do it!”

Ahh, both of them were bad at this. They were so vague in their words, it ended up not being that inspiring… and being told they were going to keep going into this dead world of fiction didn’t make her feel better either. They sounded kind of dumb, so that made her all the more stupid for feeling like she could walk a little further, huh?

So they walked, Shuichi and Himiko and her, side by side, bruised and aching as they wandered past oversized, ugly buildings empty of life. There were more bodies, still with those helmets, not just at the wrap party… four monobear staff members slumped over in a little cart that none of them felt like touching. Fallen staff in the streets, blood spattered from where they’d seemed to throw themselves from the roofs.

The first warehouse they came to was half-empty.

There was… equipment. A familiar machine, though it was cleaner than they’d last seen it, the rows of saw blades carefully cordoned off with bright yellow warning tape like it hadn’t been designed to shred Kirumi to ribbons. The only other thing that had been stored inside was what looked like a room, a massive box with steel outer walls, it’s doors propped open. A large sign hung on the outside, printed in an official looking font:  _ Re:Danganronpa V.2 - To Be Decommissioned. _

“...they just threw things together however they wanted, nyeeeh…?” Himiko mumbled, though Maki kind of agreed--why keep such a murderous thing with a set? Did they think it didn't matter to keep them separate? It was almost too ludicrous for her to get angry about, treating a deadly execution the same as some other random prop they were going to dispose of. Lazy.

“Can we look inside…?” Shuichi asked, stepping forward before either of the girls had a chance to respond. Not that Maki particularly objected, nodding and following the detective (fictional) to the room and letting him step ahead even as she slipped her hand to the knife she’d brought with her (which she shouldn’t really know how to use).

It was dark, but there was no roof on the room itself, and so there was enough light to be able to see the maps plastered along the walls, the fake trees and vines and exotic bushes that felt all the more ludicrous in the middle of some studio. It was fanciful but oddly lonely feeling… big gaps filled the space, dusty marks and stains suggesting it had once been filled with some kinds of props.

Himiko wandered to an empty table while Maki checked the foliage--yep, really plastic, leaving Shuichi to stand in the middle of the room by himself, once again musing on something. Maki sighed, rubbing her head.

“...I guess if it was going to be destroyed, there wouldn’t be anything useful here. We shouldn’t waste time.”

“Yeah… scanning with my magic, there's nothing like a phone here. It’s just some kind of leftover from the last game, right?” Himiko looked at Maki, brightening when she nodded, then glanced back at Shuichi who remained in place.

“....there’s something… something that feels kind of off, like--”

She stopped hearing what he was saying.

Maki’s hand moved before she even realized, reacting with fictional instincts that remained as sharp as real ones, her knife flying through the air and slicing a hair past Shuichi, cutting him off. He yelped, collapsing in panic, and that was enough to make Himiko scream too, even as Maki charged out of the room.

Shit, she’d gone wide--her knife hadn’t found anything, but she was sure, she was  _ certain.  _ Her eyes flit across the room before she ran for the same door they’d come out from, checking both ways for her prey.

“Shuichi! Himiko! There’s someone here!”

Left? Left, down the street they’d been walking down, only the faintest trail of movement to follow as the buildings grew more sparse.

Hurting someone who’d done this to them wouldn't make Shuichi and Himiko feel better, and she wasn't really an assassin who would torture and kill someone… but if there was any chance of getting  _ something  _ out of them, then she wouldn't hesitate.

The others would follow. Maki had a target.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow my next chapter seems to be getting out of hand in terms of length, so it might take a little while longer before I can edit and make it into something respectable! I hope it won't be too long a wait, and that this will prove a fun read until then!


End file.
